Argentinian Boy Names: the full guide

If you have read our article about Argentinian girl names, you must already know that most names used in Argentina have Spanish or Italian origins.

Some sources estimate that up to 67% of Argentinians have European ancestry, which explains why there are so many European surnames in Argentina.

Because the majority of immigrants have always been Spaniards and Italians, Argentina’s culture and first names are mostly defined by these ethnic groups.

This is because Argentina was a colony of Spain for almost 300 years. Then, Argentina went through several waves of Italian immigration.

The first one started after Argentina’s governing elites —there was no president at the time— issued the 1853 Constitution of the Argentine Nation, which included several policies that favored European immigration.

The plan was to populate rural areas that once were the native lands of indigenous groups displaced by Spanish conquerors. In fact, almost 80% of Italian immigrants were found to be agricultural workers by the 1900s.

They were primarily male; however, the most popular boy names in a 1922 census were of Spanish origin, as you can see in the following list:

Popular boy names in Argentina

Although all of the aforementioned names are classic, none of them is actually trendy nowadays.

In the official census in 2015, the top 10 most popular boy names in Argentina show a slightly heavier presence of names of Italian origin.

These names are:

A report by the Civil Registry of Buenos Aires —Argentina’s capital city— from 2019 also reveals the popularity of these names:

• Agustín (ah-goo-steen), the Spanish form of Latin Augustinus, meaning “great”, “magnificent”.
• Nicolás (neek-oh-lahs), the Spanish form of Nicholas, derived from the Greek name Νικόλαος (Nikolaos), which means “victory of the people” (in Greek, “nike” means victory, and “laos” means “people”).
• Tomás (tohm-ahs), the Spanish version of Thomas, which has Greek and Aramaic origins and means “twin”.
• Ezequiel (ehs-eh-kee-ehl), an Hebrew name meaning “God’s strength”.

What other boy names are popular in Argentina?

Some boy names do not appear in official reports, but are commonly heard in Argentina.

Here are some of those names:

Rare boy names in Argentina

Until 2015, it was hard to register a baby boy with a rare name in Argentina. This is because there was a naming law from 1969 which stated that names that sounded “extravagant, ridiculous, contrary to Argentine customs or ideology, or that could cause confusion about a person's sex” were strictly forbidden.

The government had a list of approved names and it was difficult to register a child with a name that wasn’t on the list. It wasn’t impossible, but the parents of the newborn had to start a legal process to ”convince” the authorities that the name was valid.

This changed in 2015 when a new naming law redefined the concept of a “ridiculous, extravagant name”, reducing it to a name that is offensive or causes shame or humiliation to the person who has it. Consequently, people could start naming their babies with unisex names and foreign names from different cultures (other than Italian and Spanish).

The pool of baby boy names in Argentina is now richer, including names such as:

Nicknames for common Argentina boy names

In Argentina, we have nicknames for some specific boy names. For example, elder men named “Francisco” are often nicknamed “Paco” or “Pancho”, and elder men whose name is “José” are often called “Pepe”. In younger men, we can find that boys called “Ignacio” are often nicknamed “Nacho”.

But Argentinians also tend to shorten names that have two or more syllables. Therefore, here is what people would actually call you if you had these names: